


Dazzle Me

by laniew1



Category: Glee, X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-03
Updated: 2010-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-09 11:48:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6904762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laniew1/pseuds/laniew1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regardless of what the others might think, there are some secrets that Rachel <i>can</i> keep..</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dazzle Me

**Dazzle Me**

 

She notices something is completely not right when she sets her camera up and begins recording that evenings song selection.

She doesn’t choose her songs based on how her day is going or how horribly she’d gotten slushied or even whether Finn had said one word or ten to her any longer.

That’s a lie, she still completely chooses her songs based on all that and the song she’s chosen is melancholy and sad and…

She closes her eyes sometimes when she’s singing, lets herself get completely in touch with that person that _knows_ that she’s better then this town and this place and someday she’ll have friends that believe in her and support her and…

She opens her eyes because her skin is tingling and she looks directly into the mirror and she sees the sparks and lights dancing on her skin.

The song dies in her throat and she scrambles to turn off the camera, shut down her computer.

All the while there’s color bouncing around the room and she’s not panicking.

She’s _not_ , because she has this under control.

“Rachel? Everything okay in there, sweetie?” one of her dads knocks on her door.

“Fine,” she calls, if her voice sounds a bit high-pitched, a bit hysterical her fathers are used to her and her dad doesn’t call her on it.

 

******************************************************************************

 

The first Glee Club meeting of the week they don’t sing at, normally Mr. Schuester gives them their assignments, what artist or genre that he wants them to focus on then they start splitting off into groups.

Even in Glee there’s little cliques forming here and there and Rachel is not part of any of them, she tells herself they’re just jealous of her talent, which is the complete truth.

But after the debacle with Jesse right before Regional’s, they also don’t really like her or trust her either, she doesn’t think they ever did.

She can’t completely lie to herself about that any longer, these aren’t her friends, and as much as she’d like them to be, they will _never_ be her friends.

Jesse had seen to that, his last parting shot and if his goal had been to humiliate and destroy any chances they’d had to place at Regional’s, then as his added bonus he’d made sure of her complete isolation from everyone else in New Directions.

So she normally ends up by herself, she doesn’t even look around the room or try to convince Finn to partner with her any longer, being turned down four weeks in a row had been all she’d needed. And it’s not like she has a problem singing by herself, if she sings by herself then everyone has to watch her and there isn’t an understudy desperate for her to _actually_ break her leg so they can have their big shot at stardom.

There’s only a few weeks left of school, she can do this for a few more weeks. She smoothes her hands down her skirt and pointedly stares directly at Mr. Schuester.

Around her there is the buzz of everyone pairing up into groups and she sits there. Waiting for Mr. Schuester to release them for the day.

“Okay, we need to start talking about summer practices,” Mr. Schuester finally calls the room back together.

Rachel can hear the boys groaning and moaning, Kurt included within their ranks for this one thing.

She raises her hand.

“Yes, Rachel?”

“I will be going out of town for the summer,” she says. She hasn’t gone out of town the last two years; she hasn’t had to since that miracle drug three years prior. Her surprise Friday night had changed how she’ll most likely be spending her breaks from now on if she doesn’t get things back under control.

She doesn’t add any further information; Mr. Schuester blinks at her, like he’s waiting for her to continue.

She folds her hands together in her lap and doesn’t say anything more. They don’t need to know why she’s goes out of town for the summer, or where she goes.

They don’t, because it’s not important.

Not to them.

 

******************************************************************************

 

She doesn’t post anything that week, she gets two messages asking why. Neither are from the boys that she wants to ask her if she’s okay.

 

******************************************************************************

 

Friday they perform their song selections for the week, Mr. Schuester has asked her continuously all week how her song is going and normally that would be her cue to sing it for him, to belt it out and show him that she’s a star and nobody keeps Rachel Berry down for long.

Not even Jesse St. James and his perfect hair and perfect pitch and…

Not Finn, or the rest of New Directions who all believe she should have quit after Jesse had revealed himself for the person he truly was.

Instead Rachel just tells him ‘the song is going fine’, ‘no problems’ and practices in front of the mirror in her room on Thursday hoping for the best.

Instead she watches with dread as the first note from her lips results in a blue wave of light arcing off her wrist.

She closes her mouth with a snap, the song dying on her lips as she presses them together, her hands dangle listlessly at her side and when she looks on the mirror there are tears in her eyes.

 

******************************************************************************

 

She doesn’t go to school on Friday. One of her dads stays home with her; he sits down on the corner of her bed and touches her shoulder.

“Boy trouble, baby?” he asks, she looks up at him and he’s her father. He knows all about her, he was the one that found the school and he was the one that said that if she wanted to take the drug and be normal instead of a freak that he wouldn’t take that away from her.

He knows how much she loves music, how much she wants to just sing and dance and be a star.

She hums for him, that’s all it takes.

She hums and the minute the notes pass through her lips there are pink and blue and a smidgen of yellow light floating around them.

She sobs, quietly, with dignity.

“Oh, sweetie,” her dad says, when she looks at him he’s crying too. He pulls her into his arms, and she weeps against his shoulder.

 

******************************************************************************

 

She stays home on Monday and Tuesday, her dads had called the school and the Professor is gone and Mr. Summers is gone but Ms. Munroe is still there as is Dr. McCoy.

Dr. McCoy talks her dads through how to take samples, though Rachel remembers how this is done, they have them sent by courier for Dr. McCoy to look at.

“It looks like the affects are only temporary,” Dr. McCoy says, he sounds apologetic on the phone. “You aren’t the first case of the drug wearing off that I’ve seen this week.”

“Can I take it again?” Rachel asks, her dads said they would support her in whatever decision she chose to make.

“There’s no guarantee that a second dose would even take, from some of the tests that I’ve conducted it appears that the body builds up a resistance to the drug over time resulting in a decrease in potency. You could take it again and again, but eventually it’s just not going to work any longer and we can’t be sure of any possible side effects at this point.”

Rachel hands the phone of to one of her dads and walks up the stairs to her room; she is in her comfort clothes. Sweatpants and a t-shirt, her hair in a ponytail. No one from school would even recognize her like this.

She curls up on her bed, wrapping her arms around her pillow. Her window is shut tight, blinds drawn. Her computer has been dark for three days and her camera is in a drawer in her desk.

There’s a knock at her door and her dads walk in. One of them sits on the edge of her bed, the other paces at the foot of it.

“They want us to bring you to the school,” they say and Rachel nods.

“I can’t stay here, not like this,” she says. “They already think that I’m a freak, I don’t want to prove them right.”

She could probably manage not singing, she could quit Glee and just tell Mr. Schuester that she can’t deal with everyone hating her because of Jesse. She’s already completely isolated from everyone else at school so she wouldn’t have to interact with anyone.

The problem was that when she manifested at 12 all it had taken was humming, she hums to everything.

She’ll hum in school, and she’ll end up destroying everything around her. At least at the School for the Gifted she would be a freak among a bunch of other freaks.

“All I wanted to do was sing,” she says into her pillow.

That’s all she wanted, now she doesn’t even have that.

 

******************************************************************************

 

Finn comes to the house, knocks at the door and Rachel sits at the top of the stairs.

“Hi, Mr. Berry,” he says. He sounds polite, Rachel thinks that it might be wishful thinking on her part but he also sounds slightly concerned.

This is her first crush, her fist love, after Jesse he was one of the first ones to turn his back on her.

In his hands there’s a stack of books, he’s shifting awkwardly on his feet. “Rachel hasn’t been in school, so I thought…”

“Rachel’s very sick,” her dad says, he takes the stack of books from Finn and holds them loosely in his hands. “She probably won’t be well enough to come back before the end of the school year.”

Rachel leans her head against the banister; it’s cool against her skin.

“Could I, maybe, talk to her?” Finn asks. He sounds so uncertain, he’s biting his lip, repeatedly pulling it between his teeth, then releasing it, then catching it again.

“She’s sleeping right now, I’ll tell her you stopped by, maybe she’ll feel well enough to give you a call later,” her dad says.

Finn nods, shifts on his feet some more. “Could you tell her that I, _we_ hope, that she feels better soon,” he points at the stack of books that her dad is holding, “there’s a card there, we all signed it and it’s one of those music ones, you know, the ones where you can record your own song in it, so we, you know, sang her something.”

“That’s very sweet, I’ll be sure to make sure she sees it,” her dad says. “As soon as she’s feeling better I’m sure she’ll call you,” her dad sounds so earnest. Sincere.

Finn believes him because he smiles gratefully then leaves.

Her dad closes the door behind him and leans against it, looking up to the top of the stairs where Rachel is hidden from view; she knows that he knows that she’s there.

“You completely lied to him, daddy,” she scolds; there’s not a possibility that she’ll call Finn.

Not before she leaves anyway, maybe after she’s gone she’ll call when she knows he’s not going to be there and leave a message on his machine.

It seems like the safest way.

Her dad sets the books down, on the top of them is the card that Finn had mentioned. She wonders how he got everyone to sing on it. Or even sign it, or if he just didn’t tell them it was for her.

“He seems like a very nice boy,” her dad says.

She hmms at him and closes her eyes.

 

******************************************************************************

 

She takes one bag with her, the rest of her belongings her fathers will have shipped, they take her to the airport and she’s put herself together as much as she’s able, though she’s wearing slacks and a long sleeve shirt because it’ll hide the arcs of color if she can’t help herself. She brushes her hair until it’s shiny and winds a band around her wrist to tie it back with on the plane. She purposefully doesn’t look in any mirrors.

She’s already seen herself looking pale and wan.

She gets checked in, one of her dads keeps a hand low on her back and the other keeps hold of her bag while they wait for her turn to go through security.

“You’ll call us every day,” her dads say and she nods, she hugs them and they hug her back tightly.

She thinks she’s imagining things when she sees Finn over one of her dads’ shoulders, she stiffens.

The entirety of New Directions is standing there, even Mr. Schuester and Rachel takes a deep breath.

“They just want to say goodbye, sweetie,” one of her dads says.

Rachel doesn’t say anything, she can’t.

Her dads propel her out of the line to go through security and one of them shakes Mr. Schuester’s hand while the other points her in her former fellow Glee club members’ direction.

Rachel stands there, hands linked together in front of her; she doesn’t look any one member directly in the eye, though she visually scans them enough to know they don’t want to be there.

None of them say anything and Rachel doesn’t say anything either, talking that morning at the breakfast table had resulted in yellow-orange waves of color.

She has completely no control at the moment, she hasn’t had to think about controlling her gift since she took the drug, she’s totally out of practice, but that’s what the school is supposed to be for.

She looks over at her dad’s and bites her lip.

“We need to get her through security,” her dads say. “Her flight’s at nine.”

It’s actually at ten, Rachel likes to get to the airport early to people watch and she’s not flying commercial anyway, the school is sending a jet to pick her up, she can leave whenever it’s arrived and she’s ready.

“We’ll see you in September,” Mr. Schuester says. He sounds sincere enough, so Rachel nods.

It’s highly unlikely, though they don’t know it for sure yet. It’ll take a miracle for Rachel to be able to return home by September, miracles look to be in rather short supply at the moment.

“It was nice of you all to come down,” one of her dads is saying while the other moves with her back over to security.

“She looks like complete shit,” she hears Puck say. There’s a chorus of shushing and a “Jesus Christ, Puck, how about using your _indoor_ voice,” from Kurt. Then she hears her dads’ voice talking softly at them.

Maybe explaining how she’s not completely recovered yet, she doesn’t care.

Her dad pulls her ticket and ID out of his coat pocket, he puts an arm over her shoulder and while her dad is putting her bag up on the conveyor she looks back at where the group is still standing.

She doesn’t know what her dad is saying, but Mr. Schuester looks stunned, Tina has a hand pressed to her mouth and Finn looks like he’s in shock.

The guard indicates that it’s her turn and she hugs her dad goodbye again, hands her ticket over and then walks through.

 

******************************************************************************

 

The school looks completely the same, there’s a limo that picks her up at the airport and takes her there. She doesn’t recognize the driver but that doesn’t mean anything, when she walks through the door there are a lot of new faces that she doesn’t recognize.

Dr. McCoy is waiting there with Ms. Munroe; they both smile at her even as they direct her in the direction of the labs.

She passes people that she remembers, though she keeps her head down. Some of them had seen her choosing to take the drug as a betrayal.

 

******************************************************************************

 

There’s a laptop in her room and she’s sharing with a girl that she doesn’t know, the house is completely full up at the moment.

“You’re lucky, the boys are getting tight enough that they’ll be four to a room shortly,” her roommate (Jubilee, call me Lee) says.

Her one bag of belongings compared against Lee’s side of the room looks pitiful.

“So what’s your thing?” Lee asks.

Rachel clears her throat, then hums the opening strands of ‘Walk On’, red and purple strands of color wave of her body.

“Sweet, mines…” Lee snaps her fingers and gum at the same time and flashes of color jump from her fingertips.

Rachel sits down on the end of her bed, “this used to be my room, before I mean.”

“Before you took the miracle cure,” Lee finishes for her. “Nobody blames you for it, you know that right? All of us have our crosses to bear, dreams that we want to live. Besides we go pointing fingers at each other we won’t need those that hate us to pick us off we’ll end up doing it to ourselves.”

 

******************************************************************************

 

There’s a few tests, just basic ones to see if the drug is out of her system, to see if there are any side effects that will cause her health to fail.

Lee is friends with everyone, she’s in tight with those that live in the mansion year round and she declares herself Rachel’s best friend and pulls her in with her.

Bobby and Kitty and Peter and Marie.

“Marie took the cure like you did,” Lee says. “It failed a lot quicker then yours did though. She was back here within a couple of weeks.”

“I just wanted to sing,” Rachel says. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. I wanted to sing and dance and be a star and now I’m just a freak on her way to the circus.”

“Dollar in the freak jar,” Kitty appears out of thin air. Walking through the wall on Lee’s side of the room, the first time she did that Rachel had been alone and screamed. It still kind of freaks her out a little bit though Kitty has told her enough that she knows that Kitty has evaded capture because of her ability.

Rachel makes a face at her, but makes a mental note to put a dollar in when they go down for movie night. Kitty will hound her until she does.

 

******************************************************************************

 

August rolls around quicker then Rachel is expecting. There are no classes, just lazy days spent on the lawn or in the rec room.

Rachel’s control is futzy at best, some days she can manage to go the entirety without colored waves swimming around her, others…

Ms. Munroe calls her into her office and Rachel sits in front of her desk, hands folded together in her lap. The jeans feel funny against her skin but they were purchased because Rachel apparently can’t say no to Lee.

“Have you made a decision as to whether you’d like to stay here with us, or if you’d like to try going back home?” Ms. Munroe asks.

Rachel doesn’t say anything for long minutes. But she thinks about home and the only thing that she really misses is her dads and her bedroom that she didn’t need to share.

She doesn’t miss having to keep a change of clothes in her locker for slushie days and she doesn’t miss having to wear the bright smile and manic happiness in the face of everyone else’s jealousy and hatred.

She’d miss Lee and Bobby and Kitty and Peter, she’d miss not having to hide what she is and she’d miss nobody picking on her or calling her a freak when she hums and waves of color float around the room.

It’s a simple decision really; it probably doesn’t take her as long as it should. She should weigh all the factors and assign variables and show her work while she does the problem.

Instead she bites her lip and tries for a real smile. It comes easily enough; she doesn’t feel like she has to play pretend here.

“I’d like to stay.”

 

******************************************************************************

 


End file.
